The theme of the song is consistent throughout the lyrics and although it focuses more on Billie Eilish's own experience as a child star, I felt that this resembles the experience of many people especially teenagers in a postmodern age surrounded by technology and information online. There is now a phenomena in which very young children (4 or 5 years old) know the dirtiest swear words used online and at that moment I felt a lot of innocence in them is lost and they are following viral trends online and are more passive in the consumption of media. When analyzing the lyrics, I believed the themes explored are relevant to many aspects in life but ultimately about identity and staying true to yourself.
When my partner and I first listened to this song we both interpreted the lyric 'you better keep you down' as a dark and ironic message, signifying the only way one will not be exploited is by not revealing themselves and their spark. Whereas after researching online other people's understanding, the majority of the audience sees it as a more positive embodiment ' stay true to yourself, don't listen to other people and remain humble'. I believe both messages are intertwined and reflect the same issue in society, however in our music video our darker interpretation of this line will be more evident compared to the positive analysis.
The song is only 2 minutes 31 seconds and my partner and I were rather hesitant at the start as we felt that the song was too short and especially the hymn section took up quite a while, we were not sure whether the timing would be enough for us to show everything we want without it seeming chaotic and distracting. I was thinking about adding a black and white footage of a fake worm burning and a butterfly soaring out of the fire at the start of the music video, this would reflect the positive reading of the lyric.
The mood board
We make reference to Sir John Everett Millais' 'Ophelia', as the description of Ophelia's character in Hamlet represents innocence and the painting has a heavy link to nature, and depicts both the growth and decay in nature, neither is necessarily good or evil, it is like the concept of 'Yin and Yang'. This is essentially a topic Arina and I want to explore through our music video.
Our initial music video pitch went well as we had a well-rounded concept from song choice to mood board concepts to audience engagement. During our presentation, we were able to answer questions asked with clarity as we had considered our proposal in depth.
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